Damaged by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and by fire in 2023, Willie Mae’s Scotch House was known for its crispy, seasoned, juicy fried chicken.  

And don’t forget about the red beans!

“I cook red beans everyday and lima beans on Mondays and Wednesdays,” Scotch House founder Willie Mae Seaton told the Southern Foodways Alliance. “But red beans – I know better than not to put a pot on the stove unless I have red beans!”

Born in Crystal Springs, Miss., in 1916, Seaton learned to cook by watching her grandmother and mother in the kitchen. She moved to New Orleans in 1940 when her husband got a job at a shipyard, according to the Southern Food and Beverage Museum. 

“I have been cooking all my life,” Seaton said. “When I came here, the food was a little different. Well, it didn’t take me long to learn how to do that…what kind of seasoning to put in it.”

Seaton opened a bar in the Treme neighborhood in 1957. After a year, she moved to St. Ann Street and added a beauty salon. In the early 1970s, Seaton closed the salon and expanded the restaurant. While waiting for her beer license, she only sold scotch at the bar. Customers started calling the establishment Willie Mae’s Scotch House, and it stuck. 

Seaton started her day at 5 a.m. “At 5:30 a.m., I’m down there at my restaurant putting my beans on,” she said. “I sit down, drink my coffee and read my paper while my beans are cooking.”

According to Bon Appetit, a long line formed outside the restaurant everyday before lunchtime. “Everybody eats my food – Black and white,” Seaton said. “I have the top of the line.”

In 2005, Willie Mae’s won the James Beard Award for America’s Classic Restaurant in the Southern Region. Seaton, 99, died in 2015.

For more tales from New Orleans history, visit the Back in the Day archives.


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Tammy C. Barney is an award-winning columnist who spent most of her career at two major newspapers, The Times-Picayune and The Orlando Sentinel. She served as a bureau chief, assistant city editor, TV...